Tag Archives: consent

I spent some of the time between the evocation of the three wise trolls and doing this evocation reading from ‘sychomagic: The Transformative Power of Shamanic Psychotherapy’ by Alejandro Jodorowsky. Now I had become increasingly convinced that his ‘sychomagic’ was actually a highly specialised and effective form of magic relating to what I called ‘syche Magic’ in Kaos Hieroglyphica, and I happened to have chosen today to evoke my white doll, white being the colour I associate with Psyche Magic. So it was not really a surprise to me when I blurted out a question, before I even said hello, of asking the doll whether it thought Psychomagic was a good book on Psyche Magic. It agreed that it was. Then I remembered my manners and said hello properly…

I then remembered that this doll has a second face, on its chest, so that it can ‘speak from the heart’. I started to speak to them, but the octopus head interrupted me impatiently.

“Always in a hurry to speak to someone new, never waiting to finish the conversation you were in. You’d think you didn’t have time to talk to us both.”

“Sorry” I said, “I was just trying to make sure that the heart consented to that.”

“I do” piped in the heart face in a high pitched cheerful and playful voice.

“It is well that you check the heart”, said the head, “for you need to recognise when someone’s heart is not in agreement with the words spoken by a persons head. This is the sign of a wound in the psyche, a scarred soul as it were. This can only be addressed by shifting the conversation to the heart, but beware, a wounded heart will say irrational things, illogical things, dare I say even bigoted things, and you must listen to it all without passing judgement, because the heart will need to say these things in order to heal. You must listen to a heart with your heart, listen to the hurt that is spoke, not debate the words with your mind.”

“Someone on the receiving end of a bigots abuse will feel it as an attack, especially those in vulnerable groups, and will quickly point out the fallacy of their words, but arguing with the bigots words will have little effect because they are speaking from a place of hurt feelings not logical truth. We shouldn’t blame the victims of bigoted attack for responding unhelpfully though, they have their own hurt being triggered, but someone needs to listen to the bigots and heal their hurts. Only in this way will they end their bigotry.”

I turned to the heart and asked what it thought of what the head said.

“I agree with the head. Only with more feeling!” it giggled.

We looked at each other for a moment before I asked if they had anything more to say.

“Yes, no, yes, sort of. It feels so good spending time with you. I love you.”

I told heart that I loved them too.

It then asked for a hug, so I picked up the doll from the altar and gave it a hug. It felt good to connect with the spirit in this way. After a while the heart asked me to put them back down and I did so. “Listening for consent and the end of consent is also important,” they told me, “so I feel happy that you listened.”

I looked back at the head and told it I love them also.

“Yes you do.” they replied, but I sensed it was moved in some way it couldn’t express.